A Short Review Of "Challenges Of The Global Information Society" By Pekka Himanen

 On the 25th of June 2004 Pekka Himanen released a review of the future society, where he looked at the challenges of a global information society. The review was released on the request of Finland's committee for the Future and was discussed at the international congress of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences IIAS, which took place in Korea in July 2004.


Dr. Pekka Himanen is an internationally renown researcher of the information age and his works have been published in 20 languages. He has been an advisor for several international and national organizations, institutions and governments.


The information society can be defined as a society that is based on interaction. The economy of such a society relies on productivity growth based on innovations. This review is not a futurological study, but describes the areas, where action must be taken to ensure that we respond to the challenges of a future information society successfully.


There are 10 main trends that were already in process when the review was written:

  1. Increasing international tax competition - countries were decreasing taxes to compete for skilled labor
  2. The new global division of labor - routine production has been moved to cheaper countries, like China and India
  3. Population ageing - the average age of the population is increasing, especially in Europe
  4. Increasing pressures on the welfare society - the population ageing problem leads to less taxes and more older people who are depending on the government to aid them financially
  5. The second phase of the information society - the main focus will be on how we operate and the second phase will greatly change that
  6. The rise of cultural industries - more information is digitalized meaning that cultural content is also being connected to information technology and communication technology
  7. The rise of bio-industries - the emergence of more bio-industries will make life easier and longer for the elderly, further increasing the average age of society
  8. Regional concentration - more people are moving the cities and the urbanization rate is already over 50%
  9. A deepening global divide - the gap between the richest and the poorest people globally and nationally is only widening
  10. The spread of a “culture of emergency” - the pace of development is increasing, which creates instability in society together with the widening social gap and volatility of the economy


If we look at development from a geographical perspective we can see that there are 3 main competing areas: United States of America, Europe and Asia. There are right now 3 main models of technology and economy. These are:

  1. The "Silicon Valley model" - the American neo-liberalist model
  2. The "Singapore model" - the Asian state-run model, attracts international companies
  3. The "Finnish model" - the European combination of information society and welfare state
















The main global competition models


There are 10 main values of the European "Finnish model" that could serve as a basis for the continued combination of an information society and welfare state:

  1. Caring - principle of equality, fairness or the inclusion of everyone
  2. Confidence - gives safety and allows a fruitful community to prosper
  3. Communality - meaning openness, belongingness, include other people and do things together
  4. Encouragement - an enriching community, where people feel like they could do more than they ever could alone
  5. Freedom - the right to individuality, protection of privacy and tolerance for difference
  6. Creativity - connected to a human's need for self-fulfillment and personal growth
  7. Courage - required to realize the other values
  8. Visionariness - refers to insightfulness, the courage to make this world a better place
  9. Balance - have every value in moderation and equally
  10. Meaningfulness - based on wisdom, goodness and beauty














The Pyramid of values from the psychological perspective


There are 4 key concepts of social development:

  1. A creative economy - developed countries enhance productivity through innovations
  2. A creative welfare society - a fair society provides everyone with equal opportunities in life
  3. Humanly meaningful development - to maintain the welfare society, we have to find new ways to promote a socially, mentally, physically and culturally balanced development
  4. A global culture - we must move towards joint development that is sustainable on a global scale

Source:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170221105053/https://www.eduskunta.fi/FI/tietoaeduskunnasta/julkaisut/Documents/tuvje_1+2004.pdf

Kommentaarid

Postita kommentaar

Populaarsed postitused sellest blogist

3 Innovative Ideas In Technology That Ended Up Flopping

Kujutis
 Sometimes there is an idea so innovative and so advanced that it basically screams "I am going to be a major success!" This is a story about 3 of those ideas that for some reason let us down and ended up flopping in a spectacular way. The Apple Newton MessagePad The Apple Newton MessagePad 2000 The Newton MessagePad is a digital personal assistant device developed by Apple. The first MessagePad came out in 1993 and the last version in 1998. It was a revolutionary product for it's time and it is even said to be more innovative than the iPhone 3GS at the time it was released in 1993. At it's release in 1993 the Newton MessagePad was the hottest item at Macworld Expo, where it was first announced. A single device cost $900 and 50,000 devices were sold in the first 3 months. So why does practically nobody know what the MessagePad is today? The original Pads used AAA batteries and they were known for their very short lifetimes. The software also had to learn to identify t
Lisateave

The Overall Security Situation in Estonia

 In 2007 the first ever widely acknowledged cyber war took place in Estonia and at the peak of these attacks 58 government, newspaper and bank websites were down at the same time. Prior to this incident cyber security had not been taken as a serious threat to a country and it's citizens. There was not common code of conduct against such attacks and nobody knew if a cyber attack against a NATO nation would activate collective defense under Article 5. It wasn't even clear if a state could legitimately respond to cyber-attacks. Now let's jump 10 years into the future and Estonia is known around the world as a cyber security heavy-weight and advises a lot of nations around the world about cyber security related matters. The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence (CCD COE) is also located in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia and it focuses on research, development, training and education in both the technical and non-technical aspects of cyber-defense. Let's take
Lisateave

2 Pre-Web Technologies That Had Opposite Fates

Kujutis
There have been many technologies that were invented before the creation of the World Wide Web in 1991. Some of them are now obsolete, as many more modern and efficient technologies have pushed the old ones aside. But there are also some technologies that are still widely used to this day. Email Google's Gmail Electronic mail also known as email or e-mail is a method of exchanging messages using electronic devices. Currently there are about 4 billion email accounts and approximately 300 billion emails are sent everyday worldwide. So how did email get it's start? The first email-like software entered usage in the early 1960s, but it had it's limits. You could only send messages if the users were on the same computer and the early versions required the author and the recipient to be both online simultaneously. In 1971 Ray Tomlinson developed the first system that was able to send messages to different hosts on the ARPANET using the @ sign to link user names to servers. By 197
Lisateave